


Witness Protection

by laniew1



Category: Ringer (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-04
Updated: 2012-06-04
Packaged: 2017-11-06 20:57:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/423114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laniew1/pseuds/laniew1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She doesn’t know what to do or where to go and there’s really only one person left that she even sort of trusts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Witness Protection

**Witness Protection**

 

 

 

 

She doesn’t know what to do, she’s got nowhere to go. She waits a few weeks, waits to see if Andrew and Juliet will come back and allow her to apologize fruitlessly once more. Waits to see if Siobhan will reveal herself.

Nothing happens, Andrew and Juliet are gone. Siobhan is still in hiding. She wonders if Siobhan is scared to reveal herself now that all her secrets have been unmasked.

Now that Bridget knows that Siobhan had wanted her dead.

She’s tired, so very tired and she doesn’t have anyone to call, no one to turn to.

She puts her driver’s license in her pocket and she has just enough cash to take a cab to F.B.I. headquarters.

When she walks in she squares her shoulders and takes deep breath, she’s Bridget Kelly, she’s stared down Bodaway Macawi, she’s looked assassins in the eye and been the one to walk away.

A young woman behind the front desk smiles at her, friendly and welcoming.

“Can I help you?” she asks with a perky tone.

“My name is Bridget Kelly,” she says, quietly but with conviction. Her name is pretty much all she has left.

 

**********************************************************************

 

He gets the call when he’s on assignment. He’s been getting the shit details, punishment for disobeying direct orders, yet again.

The only reason he still has a job is because Bodaway Macawi is dead, shot in self-defense by Siobhan Martin. That’s one woman that he certainly wouldn’t want to piss off, the crush should fade now that he’s not in New York anymore.

She’s a strong woman, not at all like what he’d thought she’d be like. She’s happily married though, and he doesn’t break up happy marriages.

He keeps one eye on the New York papers, he knows that she was doing a renewal ceremony with her husband; he had a crazy thought that maybe with Macawi dead that Bridget would resurface. She’s run to her sister before, there’s every likelihood that she would do that again.

But there’s no announcement in the paper congratulating the happy couple and as much as Siobhan had pretty much had him speed dial the last couple of weeks before Macawi attacked her in her penthouse, he’s pretty sure that was just because he was the only FBI agent that she really knew.

“Machado,” he says quietly into his phone when he picks it up.

“Agent Machado, this is Special Agent Victoria Brewster in the New York Office,” the voice on the other is no nonsense, female. “I have a young woman here who says that she won’t talk to anyone but you.”

His heart makes that thumping, frantic motion that it makes when he thinks about New York and Siobhan Martin and seeing her on the floor with Macawi just seconds away from killing her. She’s the only woman in New York that he would think that could pull those types of strings, maybe something happened with her husband or her step-daughter or maybe Bridget has finally contacted her.

He’s already mentally making plans on the fastest way to get to New York.

“Who’s the young woman?” he asks as he’s pushing the key into his ignition. The car rumbles to life and for a second it’s so loud he thinks that he misheard her. “I’m sorry, could you repeat that?”

“Bridget Kelly walked into the FBI office in New York and said she’d only talk to you.”

So maybe there’s two women in New York who would feel comfortable calling him. It would figure it was the messed up one and not the strong-willed one.

 

**********************************************************************

 

She has her hands cuffed in front of her, Macawi’s dead but there’s still charges leveled against her. She just sits there and she breathes. There isn’t anything she can do, she walked in and she gave herself up.

There’s a nice young woman that comes in every couple of hours and reminds her that she can call somebody, that she can have a lawyer present, that if she needs something, anything she just needs to ask.

Bridget smiles and nods, and just says ‘I know, I know, is Agent Machado here yet?’ over and over again.

She knows Andrew’s and Juliet’s and Henry’s phone numbers by heart. She could spout off one of them in a half breath. She doesn’t because none of them would come, she’s Bridget not Siobhan and for Siobhan they would move mountains, but Bridget is the muck on the bottom of their feet.

The door opens and she sits there and breathes, waiting for the questions, waiting for her turn in the conversation so she can repeat ‘I know, I know, is Agent Machado here yet?’

“Bridget?” she hears and her head snaps up, Machado is standing there and he looks shocked to see her actually sitting there, willingly.

“I’m sorry,” she says. Because here is one more person that she lied to and it would completely serve her right if Machado said, no sorry, can’t help, you’re a lying bitch and you reap what you sow.

She feels the tears in her eyes and she blinks rapidly, nothing to see here, just dust, just allergies.

“I didn’t know who else to call,” she says, her voice sounds thick to her own ears, like it’s full of tears and she’s so tired.

“You could have called your sister,” he says, the door closes behind him and he takes a moment before he sits across the table from her. He has a closed file folder, her name typed in the tab across the top. “She’s been worried about you.”

He looks surprised when she laughs, it sounds a bit hysterical and she thinks he looks _more_ confused when she starts crying.

 

**********************************************************************

 

The story comes out slowly; she knows she’s in an interrogation room so he doesn’t remind her that they’re being watched and recorded and that everything she says can be used against her in a court of law.

What he thinks most is he should have listened to his gut at the beginning, he’d known that Siobhan Martin was Bridget Kelly, he’d thought that at the very beginning and he’d let himself be dissuaded.

So that crush on the strong ass-kicking woman was on the messed up one and not the married one after all. He should probably be grateful, but there’s still people gunning for Bridget even with Macawi out of the way.

One of them is apparently her sister and as Bridget reveals the web of lies that she’s been living in for the last 8 months he wonders if there are angels looking down on her because with everything that she’d been dealing with it was a wonder that Bridget even made it out alive.

 

**********************************************************************

 

She finishes talking, reveals that Siobhan was alive the whole time, that she’d orchestrated part of Bridget’s running as a way to give whoever was after her someone else to kill that wasn’t Siobhan.

“You called me,” Machado says, he’s just listened, asked one or two questions to clarify things that she was telling them, him.

“I trust you,” Bridget says. He was probably the only one that she did anymore.

 

**********************************************************************

 

“We need to get her out of the city, somewhere discreet, safe, where no one would think to look for her,” Victor says.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Agent Brewster says.

“You heard her, her own sister set her up to be murdered in her place, if Siobhan Martin is in New York City Bridget is not safe here.”

“She lied to everyone for months, she played the part of her sister, we could set up a good case for identity fraud,” Brewster says, she doesn’t sound like she means any of it; she sounds like she wants Victor to change her mind.

“You could do that,” Victor allows, “but she was a victim here just as much as anyone else. Her sister hired a dirty cop to push her to turn to her for help, there had to have been some reason why Bridget chose to play the part of her sister and she was good at it, fooled everyone for months so they’ve probably done this before.”

“If I need her back here…” Brewster says.

“I’ll bring her back, but she’ll be safer anywhere else.”

 

**********************************************************************

 

The car is non-descript, plain. Bridget is in jeans, a t-shirt and FBI windbreaker. Her hair is pulled back in a slopping ponytail and she walks out of FBI headquarters with Victor beside her.

Nothing to see here, just two FBI agents going out on an assignment, she opens her own door as he goes around to the driver’s side.

“Are we driving the whole way?” she asks.

“Safer,” Victor says. He told her she had to call him in Victor or Machado, just not Agent Machado. So she’s calling him Victor because at least that way it sounds like they’re something like friends, maybe partners which is the way she thinks they’ll be playing it up until they get to wherever they’re going in Arizona and he hands her off to the Marshals or someone else.

“We took a road trip when we kids,” she says, she leans her forehead against the glass. “It was awful.”

She and Siobhan had fought the entire time. Looking back now she has to wonder if her sister had ever really liked her, or if she was always just a pawn that Siobhan could shove around the chess board to suit her whims.

 

**********************************************************************

 

The house is a small two bedroom one. The siding is a cream color with blue shutters; it kind of reminds him of the type of house that he’d thought of when he’d thought of getting married and having kids and a dog.

There’s double locks on all the doors and he makes sure to point out the locks on Bridget’s bedroom door and windows, shows her where the panic buttons are in each room, alarms ringing directly to the local FBI offices and 911.

“Do I get a gun?” she asks and he looks at her, she looks serious and if he didn’t think he’d get fired he’d give her one. It’s not like she doesn’t know how to use it.

They live in kind of quiet harmony, he’s transferred to the local offices, when he’s not able to be there a young female FBI agent sits with Bridget.

She doesn’t tend to do much; the young female FBI agent (Carla) asks him if he’s thought about having her talk to a counselor or a therapist.

He watches after that and he can sees the signs that he’s been overlooking because paying too much attention to Bridget is dangerous.

She survived multiple attempts on her life, if she wasn’t suffering from some form of PTSD he would be surprised.

“Would you talk to somebody?” he asked one morning, she’s cooked and it’s a novelty that really hasn’t worn off. Home cooked breakfasts, dinners waiting when he makes a point of telling her that he’ll be home. It’s like having a wife without the sex.

It hasn’t escaped his attention that Bridget was the one that he was dealing with, when he thought he was harboring a certain fascination with the very married Siobhan Martin, it was really the quite _un_ married Bridget Kelly that he was in fact developing feelings and emotions for.

“You mean like a shrink?” she asks. She makes a face into her tea, she makes him coffee every morning and sits at the kitchen table picking at toast while he eats. He’s told her multiple times that she doesn’t need to cook for him, at all if she doesn’t want to, but there’s always food waiting.

He thinks she’s bored. He needs to find something to keep her occupied. A bored Bridget could be a dangerous Bridget.

“Or a counselor.”

“So a shrink, I’m not crazy.”

“I didn’t say that you were, it’s just anyone else in your position would need to talk about what happened.”

“My sister and Bodaway Mocawi were fighting for who got the honor to kill me or get me killed. They both lost,” Bridget shrugs.

“You still had to shoot people, defend yourself. An FBI agent in your position would have to have a psych eval and be signed off on.”

“But I’m not an FBI agent and I’m okay.”

Victor looks at her, at the dark circles under her eyes, the way her hands tremble even when she has them linked together on the table to keep them still.

“So you’re going to start sleeping at night then,” he says and she just looks at him. There’s a betrayed look in her eyes like she can’t believe that he’s calling her on this. But he’s supposed to be protecting her. Having her have to go to the hospital due to exhaustion is _not_ protecting her.

“I sleep,” she says it haltingly, like she knows it’s a lie as much as he does and she’s waiting for him to call her on it.

“If you need something Bridget you can knock on the door,” he says. He’s mostly sure that she’ll never take him up on it, but if she needs to then he knows that he’ll be awake and ready to be there for her.

 

**********************************************************************

 

She doesn’t ever plan on taking him up on the offer, but she has a nightmare two nights later, a bad one that has Mocawi on top of her, hands around her neck, she knows that if she could glance to the right she would see Juliet’s broken body, open eyes. If she could look to the left she would see Andrews, just before the world goes black she sees the door bust open and Victor coming rushing in like the savior that he is.

She gasps herself awake, eyes snapping open; she wraps her arms around herself because she’s so very cold and she shakes.

She can’t take this anymore and she’s got her blankets wrapped around her and is in the hallway in front of Victor’s room before she can think about it. She stands there, doesn’t even knock and she wonders if he’s psychic, if he’s been keeping himself awake waiting for her to need something, because the door opens and he’s standing there.

He’s dressed down, sleep pants and a white t-shirt, she’s almost always seen him in a suit and tie, he changes most nights only after he goes into the privacy of his own bedroom.

“I’m sorry,” she says, because this was a mistake. He doesn’t say anything, just holds the door open and puts a hand on her arm, tugging her in and closing the door behind them. He sits her on the bed and goes to the bathroom, coming back with a glass of water and pill. She takes both, dutifully swallowing the pill and curls up on the edge of the bed watching as he places the glass on the bedside table. She closes her eyes as he walks around the bed and she feels it dip slightly when he sits down, the bed shifting as he settles next to her, when she turns over onto her other side she can see that he’s laying on his back, hands folded together on his chest.

She shifts closer to him, so she can feel the heat of his body and know that she’s not alone, she closes her eyes.

 

**********************************************************************

 

Bridget is curled up into his side when he wakes up, he’s got one arm under her shoulders holding her close and luckily they’re laying in such a manner that his morning erection is not pressing into her.

He brushes the hand on the arm that isn’t falling asleep under her over her face, smoothing her hair back and then gently extricates himself without waking her. He stands, stretches and doesn’t see her eyes open as he leaves the room.

He takes a shower, scrubbing himself down and sighs when he realizes that he’s still hard and he braces one arm against the wall, biting into his arm as he jerks himself off roughly. He pointedly doesn’t think about anyone, certainly doesn’t think about Bridget curled up warm and sweet next to him, needing him. That way leads to bad thoughts and she’s in love wither her sister’s husband so it can’t end well.

It takes him just a few minutes and he’s groaning into his arm and he breathes for a moment before turning into the shower spray and scrubbing away the evidence.

He needs to get a grip on things, maybe find a girl to go out with that isn’t named Bridget or Siobhan.

He dries off, pulls clean clothes on and when he gets back to his room Bridget is gone, the only evidence that she was even there the rumpled spot she was sleeping in and the fact that both pillows have head indentations in them. He doesn’t pick the pillow that her head had laid on up and breathe it in because that would be creepy and she would probably come back and catch him.

He pulls out the lockbox with his gun and badge in it, sliding the gun into his holster, the badge and his phone into his coat pocket.

She’s in the kitchen already when he gets out there and she gives him a sweet smile as she puts a coffee cup down on the table in what is his spot.

He doesn’t say anything just smiles back, the air between them feels sensitive and quiet so he doesn’t say anything. He touches her back gently when he reaches up on top of the fridge for the bread that she keeps up there for some reason and she doesn’t move away just shoots him a small, secret smile.

They fix toast and tea in companionable silence and he’s just opening his mouth to ask what her plans are when his phone starts ringing. He pulls it out and leans against the counter.

“Machado,” he says and she grins at him as she squeezes her tea bag out against her spoon, setting it on the side of the saucer.

“Agent Machado, this is Andrew Martin,” the voice is familiar and his eyes fly over to where Bridget is smiling to herself.

“Good morning Mr. Martin, what can I do for you?” he asks quietly. Bridget startles, eyes going wide, smile dropping from her lips.

“I was hoping that you would have some way of putting me in touch with Bridget, I’ve been made to understand that she turned herself into you and…”

Bridget is shaking her head at him and he widens his eyes in query to her and she mouths ‘no’ back at him.

“Mr. Martin, Bridget Kelly is in protective custody,” he says.

“Yes, yes, I understand that, I just wanted the opportunity…”

“Protective custody,” Victor repeats. “It means that I cannot put her in contact with you or anyone that she was connected with even if I had the capability to do so.”

The capability to do so would mean walking 10 steps across the kitchen and handing the phone to Bridget, he doesn’t think she’d take it though. Not if the expression on her face is anything to go by.

There’s silence on the other end. “I understand Agent Machado, if there ever does come an opportunity to do so could you please ask her to call either myself or Juliet.”

“Sure,” he says. “I should warn you though that the likelihood of that happening is pretty slim.”

“Of course, thank you for your time.”

He clicks the off button and looks at where Bridget has both hands wrapped around her tea cup, bent over it like it can warm her.

He walks over so that he’s standing behind her and then leans down and presses a kiss to the top of her bowed head.

“I’ll see if I can find someone discreet,” he says.

“Thank you, Victor.”

 

**********************************************************************

 

The therapist is not that much younger than her, she lists off her qualifications when she sits down across from her and they’re all agency based.

“I’m not an agent,” Bridget says, she wants that known right up front so nobody thinks that she’s playing pretend FBI agent, “so I’m sure whatever stuff you talk to them about would be really different.”

“Not quite,” the therapist says. “You were still harmed, threatened. It might not have in the line of duty but you were still in the line of fire.”

 

**********************************************************************

 

The therapist comes by three times a week to talk to Bridget, they neither one tell Victor what is being talked about. The therapist falling under the patient confidentiality laws and Bridget just seems small and fragile when he comes home after a therapist visit.

There are no more calls from Andrew Martin and Victor would think that maybe the man has backed off, he has a wife actually hiding in the city somewhere, he would think that she would be more his priority then the sister that had been pretending to be her, but he hears murmurs from higher ups that he might be pressing his luck there instead.

Victor would wish him luck but it would _be_ just his luck that Andrew would get through to somebody that would say, ‘sure, let me set up a meeting for you’.

Bridget sleeps beside him most nights, there’s a few nights she doesn’t and there’s no rhyme or reason to when she will or won’t so he has no clue how to prepare himself in advance.

He knows she’s woken a few times before him and they almost always end up spooned together, her hands wrapped up in his, him pressed up alongside her back, more times than not he’s hard. She doesn’t say anything and he knows that this is a bad idea, he should back off, should send her back to her room, request someone else take over his assignment.

But he doesn’t.

 

**********************************************************************

 

They’ve been living in the house for going on three months, Bridget knows that preparations are being made to move her, there’s talk about witness protection which she’s been balking at. She doesn’t want to change her name or her life.

She doesn’t. But she also knows that she can’t continue like this. In all the weeks that she knew Victor before she ran that first time she’d never once had a sexual thought about him.

Never thought about wearing the nightgown instead of the sleep pants and t-shirt that he seems to favor, never thought about figuring out a way to get his pants off him so that he could spoon up behind her and slide in.

Morning sex had almost always been her favorite, when everything was lazy and slow and sleepy and the world ceased to exist except for the two warm bodies in a bed together.

They’re dangerous thoughts, she doesn’t voice them.

It’s been months since she had sex, that’s all it is she decides. She could ask someone to get her a vibrator, but she’s pretty sure that most of them think that she and Victor are fucking already so she doesn’t.

 

**********************************************************************

 

The morning that it all goes to shit is the morning that Bridget kisses him. Or he kisses her. There’s kissing regardless and really all he’d been going to do was reach into the drawer right beside her. He just touched her hip, shifting her slightly to the right and she’d turned and pushed up on her toes and he’d leaned down slightly and as first kisses went it was light and chaste, with just a hint of tongue.

He leaned back and she looked up at him and smiled that soft sweet smile and when she pushed up this time her lips were open and her mouth was wet and hot and the kiss was nothing sweet and all that side of frantic.

Something drops out of her hands and breaks out on the kitchen floor and he makes a noise in his throat and she makes one back as her arms wind around his back. He puts his hands on her hips and lifts her slightly so she’s settled higher against him and if there weren’t clothes between them, if he didn’t need to be out the door in ten minutes for a meeting he’d spread her out on the kitchen table and…

His phone starts ringing in his pocket and he pulls back; she’s grinding against him and his hips are rolling into hers, fucking standing up with their clothes on.

“Fuck,” he mutters, he takes a deep breath, then another. She chases his lips and when he doesn’t bend back down she licks the underside of his jaw and bites softly at the side of neck. He keeps one hand on her hip, pressing her into the counter trying to still her movements and she whines into his neck.

He fumbles for his phone, manages to get it to his ear.

“Machado,” he says, he sounds breathless, he hopes he doesn’t sound like he’s getting ready to fuck Bridget Kelly in the kitchen of their rented house.

“Agent Machado, this is Supervisory Agent Warton, I need you to bring Ms. Kelly with you when you come in this morning.”

“What, why?” he manages, he stills and feels cold all of a sudden.

“She has some visitors that won’t take no for an answer and they’ve managed to get approval for a supervised meeting here. So get down here as soon as possible.”

“Yes sir,” he says, he hangs up the phone, sets it in the counter and puts the other hand on Bridget’s other hip. He leans down, presses their foreheads together.

“Victor?” she asks quietly. There’s a silent question.

“You’re coming in with me this morning,” he says.

Her face goes white and he keeps his hands on her hips as her legs slide down to the ground, when she’s standing on her own he backs up a step, she doesn’t let him move far, keeping fingers fastened around his belt loops.

“You have visitors,” he says. He’s sure it’s Andrew and Juliet, possibly even Siobhan.

“No,” she says, she looks stricken and he presses a palm to the side of her face.

“You were in love with him,” he says, just to remind her, just to remind himself.

“That was months ago, and I was wrong. He was just the first guy who didn’t befriend me just to see how fast he could fuck me.”

“You’re not in love with me either,” Victor says. “We’ve just been stuck here together for too long, it’s like Stockholm syndrome without, you know, one of us being held hostage.”

“Victor,” she says, she leans up and presses a kiss to his lips, he holds himself stiff and tight and doesn’t respond.

“It’s better this way,” he says.

“Why is it only up to you,” she mutters, she looks sullen and angry and _young_.

He kisses her forehead, hugs her tightly and then forces himself to let her go.

“You should go get dressed.”

 

**********************************************************************

 

She’s quiet in the car, she doesn’t respond to any of his attempts to make conversation so eventually he stops trying.

Warton is waiting when they pull up, Bridget has an FBI jacket on as well as sunglasses, and when Warton opens the door up for her she lets him help her out of the car.

“This way,” Warton says and Bridget follows him, she doesn’t know if Victor is following or not, she’s sure he is. Just like she’s sure that as Warton leads them into the building that one of the rooms they pass by has Andrew and Juliet in it.

It’s just the two of them in the office, Warton shutting the door gently in Victor’s face, Bridget sits in a chair opposite his desk, folds her hands in her lap.

“Have you thought anymore on what we discussed?” he asks and she nods. Because she has and she’d actually made her decision before what had happened in the kitchen. She’s not going to change it now.

“Good, I’ll set things up and by the time you finish up the Marshal’s should be here,” he flips the file folder that had been lying open on his desk closed, it had probably been hers.

“Who’s here?” she asks, because she doesn’t want to see Siobhan and as much as she wants to she doesn’t want to see Andrew either. She could probably stomach having Juliet yell at her but really all she wants to do is wait in Warton’s office until it’s time to go. Maybe her new life will be better than her old life.

“Andrew and Siobhan Martin, Juliet Martin,” Warton looks at her. “I would recommend not speaking with your sister, due to…” Bridget nods because she completely understands and he doesn’t need to elaborate. “But I can move Andrew and Juliet to a private conference room for you to speak to them.”

Bridget sits there for a second, she would want to cling to Andrew, she’d loved him. It’s the reason that she will not see Victor again before she leaves, she doesn’t love him, but there is the possibility if they remain in close quarters that not only will they end up lovers but she’ll end up falling _in_ love with him.

And she’s already made her decision, witness protection, not having to worry about how what she was doing, how she was living her life was affecting anyone else. It’ll be her again, just her against the world.

“I’ll speak with Juliet,” she says. “But not Andrew or Siobhan.”

Warton nods and stands starting for the door; he holds it open and leads her down the hallway. There are a lot of people and she folds her arms around herself. She glances at offices as she passes them and in one of them she sees Victor leaning over a desk with a young woman talking to him, pointing at something that they’re both looking at.

She’s making the right decision.

The right choice, Warton leads her into a conference room.

“You can have a seat and I’ll be back in a few minutes with Miss Martin,” he says, she nods and sits in a chair at the side of the table. Pulling herself up to it, folding her hands together.

She waits and it’s just a few minutes before the door opens.

“Bridget?” she hears and she looks over at the doorway, Juliet is standing there, alone, thankfully so at least Warton hadn’t gone against her wishes.

“Hi,” she says, Juliet stands there for a second then walks the length of the table, pulling out a chair across from her to sit in.

“We’ve been looking for you,” she says, she looks happy to see her which surprises Bridget slightly. Maybe she’s lulling her into a false sense of security before she pulls out the teeth and nails.

“Here I am.”

“Daddy’s been trying for months to find you, since we got back and you were gone and nobody knew where you’d gone only that there’d been a fight at the penthouse after we left and Bodaway Macawi was killed there?”

Juliet reaches a hand across the table and Bridget looks at it, at her, she bites her lower lip, worrying it between her teeth for a second before she takes a deep breath.

“You can tell your father that I’m fine,” she says, she tries to infuse her voice with at least a small measure of happiness, but she knows she fails once she sees Juliet’s face drop.

“You, you can tell him yourself,” Juliet says, her hand is still on the table, reaching out to her, Bridget doesn’t reach back and that little bit of her heart that she’d left with Juliet and Andrew breaks.

“Agent Warton brought me back first but daddy’s here waiting to see you,” she says. “Siobhan is here too, with the twins,” she adds as an afterthought. Bridget stills, her heart sounds like it’s thundering loud and she hadn’t thought that there’d been anything left of her heart for Andrew and Siobhan to break but there it is.

“I’m only talking to you,” she says softly.

“What?” Juliet’s eyes widen. “No, Bridget…”

“Only you Juliet, and only for a few minutes, the reason they allowed you to come today, allowed me here is I transfer to the US Marshal’s custody once I leave this room,” she’s bluffing, she doesn’t know why Warton decided to accede to whatever demands had been being leveled at him, she can only guess, but she supposes that she must sound like she knows what she’s talking about because Juliet’s face goes sheet white.

“Bridget…”

“I’m sorry, Juliet, for the pain that I caused you and your father and Siobhan.”

“No, no, daddy said that we would be a family, all of us,” Juliet says, there are tears in her eyes, they’re not falling yet and she’s not sure why Andrew would hurt Juliet like that, tell her those things. They’re lies obviously since Siobhan is here with the children she supposes that her sister was pregnant with and since she’s here with Andrew that must mean that they are Andrew’s.

The door opens and Warton steps in, “Ms. Kelly, we’re ready,” he says and Bridget pushes herself away from the table.

She pauses, reaches across the table and squeezes Juliet’s hand. “Be happy, Juliet. That’s what I want for you,” Juliet turns her hand over and grips Bridget’s tightly, the other coming up to wrap around her hand as well.

“Bridget, please.”

Bridget squeezes again and pulls her hand free; she doesn’t look back, not even when she hears Juliet start sobbing behind her.

Warton places a hand on her shoulder, squeezes gently and leads her out into the hallway, closing the door gently behind them.

“You should send her father and step-mother in to her,” she says, she feels detached from everything. Like she’s actually doing this.

“As soon as you’re out of the building,” he says. He has a hand on her arm and moves her down a different hallway then they’d come originally, into an elevator that he pulls out a badge to scan.

“I don’t have any clothes, or…” she closes her eyes briefly. “I don’t have anything with me, I didn’t think it would happen this fast.”

“It’s better if you don’t have personal effects that can be traced back to your previous life with you when you start protection,” he says. “Everything will be provided for you.”

The elevator stops finally and when the doors open she can see that they’re in an empty parking garage. There are two cars, four people standing alongside them all with US Marshal jackets on.

Warton stops and Bridget stops with him. “Ms. Kelly I wish you the best of luck,” he says warmly, she nods and swallows. She’s so very scared, she’s alone.

But she’s always been alone, even when she was growing up, with a twin that should have been her best and most faithful friend she’d been alone.

She can do this; this is an opportunity she knows, for a new life, where she’s made none of the mistakes that she’s made in the old one.

She can do this.


End file.
